I always liked the Victorians’ “memento mori” tradition, which wasn’t really an embrace of death so much as an acceptance of it. I think that’s a healthy attitude: Everybody’s gotta go some time, you may as well get comfortable with the idea.

Chandelle—the funeral industry really is a racket. One of my sisters went with mom & they started at the cheapest coffin and went up until they found one they liked (still close to the bottom of the list). It was very tasteful, and for something that got covered in a flag, anyway even the price they ended up paying seemed insanity to me.

I’ve told DH that, when I’m dead, he can do whatever he wants with me. I’m certainly not going to be around to care. But what I’d like is something that doesn’t disrupt the natural process of returning to the earth. He’s said he wants to plant a tree over me; I could go with that. Or a pine box, or a linen shroud, or cremation, or freezing-and-blowing up. Again, not gonna be here for it. But I really don’t want a traditional formaldehyde-and-coffin funeral.

And, I want a Speaking. I’ve already told my cousin that she is to say something along the lines of, “She could be a real bitch sometimes, but I loved her anyway,” as long as what she decides on doesn’t make me out to be something I wasn’t. I even told one of my sisters that, if she feels moved to speak at my funeral, she should tell the truth. She and I had a conversation about how weird it was to hear everyone make dad out to be some kind of saint. I’m glad it wasn’t just me who felt that way.

But attending classes in the local mortuary was the opposite of fun and exciting. I could not believe what sort of degradations were inflicted upon a human body to make it look lively and sane. Almost nobody has any idea what happens in mortuaries, with good reason. Paul McCartney’s famous phrase about slaughterhouses with glass walls could easily be applied to death care. And the mortician profession is an incredible racket.

Observing the standard operations in a mortuary convinced me that I would never want those things done to my body. Not because of my attachment to my body, but because I don’t want to contribute to the pathology of our culture’s denial of death. For a long time I thought I would just be cremated, but now I’d prefer to be wrapped in a muslin sack and tossed in the ground. Let the animals eat me. Screw it. I’m a part of the earth and I’d like to feed it when I die.

Since adopting Buddhist practice I have enjoyed death meditations – bringing awareness to my impending death, playing it out in my mind. It causes me to look really hard at the way I’m spending my days, and how I treat my loved ones, and the things I say and waste.

Thanks for this post, xJane. I hope you have support through your grief.

See, I am deathly afraid of death. So staring at it right up close through the “life” of a cadaver wasn’t my bag. But the book made me confront some of my most fearful issues and arrive on the other side of the cover with such a better perspective on life and death.

I’m with you xJane. I think we need more reality in death. If people are sad, then let them be sad. If people want to laugh and cry – all at the same time. So be it. But make it true to the person who died. Make it a celebration of the life they had, the life they no longer had, and the glorious cycle.

My father’s funeral was full of joy for our family. His (and our) suffering was finally over. His service was one with laughter and shared memories, not the usual LDS service. And yes, I still miss him terribly after more than 13 years.

Just in the last week I have made my own wishes known, to have my ashes spread in the Snake River that flows to the Pacific Ocean.

I wish we as a society could be more accepting of the death aspects of our existence as well.